Hi all! Since before Christmas I have been able  to do nothing. The Christmas period was spent in part away from home and then occupied with family events. Then in January I had vascular problems in both feet and the specialist had me shut up in hospital for twelve days. I still have problems and difficulty in walking due to a constant pain in the lumbar region. The cold weather and lack of a suitable heater make working in the garage difficult.  However, since this web is for airing modelling topics and not the state of one's health. I can comment a pair of activities, one dating from last year and the other from this week.

Several years ago I purchased a Roco rerailer which, in fact, could only be easily used at one particular point on the layout, due to the width of its arms and the separation between tracks. When I rerlaid the track on thicker cork underlay it didn't seat properly ion the track so I purchaesd a Proses electric rerailer, which is too large for my layout, can fit on only one siding and occupies half of it. It also requires the  rerailed vehicle to cross four points before reaching the main line.

Thus it occurred to me to modify the Roco item. I removed the arms and feet (see original picture here):

I then applied the tip against the sleeperss. measured the gap at the rear end over the track, cut pieces of plasticard just the width between the rails and glued them to the rerailer with the followinf resulta:

 I can now rerail in up to ten different places on the layout.

In November and January I purchased two second hand Jintys from Hattons, with dcc chip fitted by them I must say I am pleased with the service obtained). However the second one arrived just days before admission to hospital and I only had time to test that it worked. This week I deceided to modify its address and spent a whole afternoon without success. Whatever I did, the address was always 3.The day after I had another go and realised I was using the wrong program. Once this error was corrected, there was no problem, the loco answered to its new addresss but ran backwards when forwars was selected and viceversa- I put this down to the fact that when soldering the decoder, the operativv had confused the wires. This was no problem, since it was suffiient to change bit 0 of CV 29 to 1.

But I now have an unexpected problem with yje Jintys. I have already glued various Kadee 334 (between the rail) magnets and tested when with my goods and passenger stock, but I now find that the Jintys jam against them, as part of the belly is too low. I shall now have to rip up the magnets and refit them and make space for the remaining one I want to fit by futting out the sleepers, unless there is any better way.

Regards to all.